In January 2015, a group of 15 Casco Bay High School students spent a week working in USM’s CI2 lab (Creative Intelligence, Innovation, Collaboration) and at Portland’s Oak Street Studios to create interactive sculptures that integrate technology and art. This project entitled “ARTtronics” is part of the ongoing arts-based curriculum, facilitated by Sidexside and USM art education.

USM art students and faculty and the newly formed King Tide Party art collective will observe Portland’s full-moon tide – also known as a “king tide” – with a special event at noon on Thursday, Oct. 9, at the city’s waterfront public-art site, MoonTide Garden, Ocean Gateway Pier, located just east of the intersection of Commercial and India streets.

Jennifer Wolfe is the only student photographer from Maine to have a photograph selected for the juried show, the Flash Forward Boston Annual College Student Exhibition, known as “a Celebration of New England’s Best Student Photographers.” The exhibit features the work of 25 New England students and is on display until May 10 at The Harrison Gallery in Boston.

Thirty-two students at Casco Bay High School, working with SidexSide, a Portland educational non-profit, professors from the University of Southern Maine’s (USM) computer science and visual arts departments, and SidexSide’s engineering expert, will create interactive sculptures that respond to cues from the surrounding environment.

King tides are the highest tides of the year. The “Envisioning Change”-Pop-Up Shop King Tide event is an artistic and scientific response to a worldwide phenomenon that will greatly affect the future of Portland’s waterfront. This event is being hosted during the only King Tide to occur during daylight hours in 2013, at 11:22 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 4. The predicted height is 11.6 feet above sea level.